after you finish the LEGO diner, or concurrently?? 
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Gonna swatch – just as Cara suggested – but here’s what I THINK I want to record:
- High Temp
- Low Temp
- Dew Point (same as my temp colors)
- Precipitation (in inches – shades of green for rain, light blue/whites for snow)
- Weather (i.e. Cloudy/Partly Cloudy, Sunny, Thunderstorms, Foggy, Rain, Snow)
- Wind Speed (in 5 mph increments up to 60 mph)
- Stage of the Moon (New Moon, Waxing, Full Moon, Waning)
My husband seems to think it will look like a mishmash. I’m thinking I will do little 20 sts (or so) strips and combine the strips together – similar to the Color Explosion construciton. I realize that I’ll have an uneven # of rows, but here’s hoping that tornados, etc. only come on months with less than 31 days . . . 7 x 31 = 217 rows. I need to see what that is in inches – of course I’m using Felted Tweed. Maybe a boarder between each day which will make it longer??
As you can see I have quite a bit of thinking to do.
What color is the wind???
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I think it will be like the water we concocted for your daughter’s blanket. I think a really pale blue/grey for the wind, or maybe Scree?
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Hello Sweeties,*
Just a few quick notes before I get going on my other posts for today.
In my house, today is Swatch Day. I’m going to be working in Felted Tweed and I know my gauge there but I’ll be looking at some other ideas today. It occurred to me that this could also be modified to document a pregnancy or an epic vacation. Perhaps a child’s first year of college. We’re not confined by a calendar year here and if I want to start something later in the season, it will likely be in a different yarn. You do whatever you want. You can paraphrase Crazy Horse - “It’s a good day to swatch” - or can go all Arya Stark - “Not today swatch.” I’ll chat a little bit later about how to use your swatch to figure out both how big your blanket will be (not a hard thing to do) and to see if you are maintaining the proportions of the original (a little bit more math.)
Also, I meant what I said about all yarns being welcome here. Look, we have an amazing group of people here but the reality is that we only truly know two things about each other. The first is that we like to make things. The second is that we like to make things with yarn. You might not like my choices and I may not like yours.
Bottom line, there are enough things in the world that we divide over. Fiber arts should never be one of them. And that, my friends, is a hill I will die on.
Last, but certainly not least, please don’t do anything here that will cause you a hardship. If you need to buy your yarn a ball at a time, that’s just fine. If you don’t want to work on this every day, nobody’s looking but you. Go at your own pace. If this is going to be your peaceful quiet time, you certainly don’t have to be an active participant on this thread. I hope you’ll pop in and say hi so we know you’re out there too but if you want to just hang out in the background or not hangout at all, well that’s just fine too. This is meant to be bite sized and easy. It should be a blessing, not a curse.
I’ve got to run into my office today for a bit to pick up the mail and process the checks and thank you letters. This is a big week for fundraising so I can’t be 100% off the grid. I’ll be back in a few hours with the updated “how to make 365 squares a square” and a few other blanket options.
*There’s a Dr. Who marathon on BBC all week and River Song just arrived this morning. I will now say “Hello Sweetie” in a British accent to everyone I meet.
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That’s brilliant! And it could be a weather and temperature blanket.
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You made me laugh. Concurrently with the LEGO diner, grin.
(for those not sure what Jan and I are talking about, I was given an ‘Expert Creator’ Lego set for Christmas. It’s a model of a diner with gym and recording studio above it. It has nearly 2,500 pieces, and I haven’t done any Lego for over 50 years. Going well so far, but it does eat into knitting and crafting time).
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I’m planning to do two rows showing the high temp of the day, for wherever I am, and a quick peek at the forecast shows that even with one color covering 5 degrees, the first 6 days are each a completely different color.
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Where is the day going? I’m finally sitting back at my desk to get this work done.
So let’s talk about squares which will lead us into three other blankets. Are you ready? @cdw522 got me to thinking about squares the other day. And it gets tricky. I hopped only line (there was no way I was doing this math on my own) and looked up the square root of 365. It is 19.1049731745. I have yet figured out how to knit or crochet .1049731745 of a square and I have 0.0000000000 interest in trying.
That left two options. A 19 x 19 square blanket or 20 x 20 square blanket. 19x19=360 so it’s short 4 days. 20x20=400 so it’s over by 35 days. A dilemma. That same night, I went over to my little local joint to get some takeout for dinner. While I was waiting at the bar, I had a thought. “I wonder if we could log cabin this?” Just a few minutes later, my phone dinged and I had a text from Kay saying “Hey, what do you thing about log cabining” I immediately texted back this.
The next morning I started working on it and it opened up a whole new portal of ideas. What does log cabin look like? A quilt! Could I come up with a quilt pattern that would work. So I made two layout charts in Excel - one of a 19 square quilt and one of a 20 square quilt and it all came together pretty quickly.
For the 20 x 20 quilt, I sat and looked at for a bit and realized that I was counting the wrong thing. I didn’t necessarily want 20 identically sized squares, I wanted 365 DAYS of bite sized (for the most part) knitting and I came up with this. ’
The blue squares represent days that would take more work than the just a single square day. On the blue days that you work the ones in the corner, you would be making three squares for that day. On the blue days on the center of the sides, you would be doing a square that’s bigger than the regular (no color fill) squares and in the middle blue square, you would be doing an even bigger one that day.
So let’s do a scenario. Let’s say my gauge is 5 stitches to the inch, my center square is 1 inch by 1 inch (f stitches and 5 ribs) and I want my basic square to be 3 x3. My block would look like this.
When I reach the blue squares in the corners, I will make three of these with that days info.
On the four squares on the sides, I need to make a 6 x 6 inch square which looks like this.
The center square is the biggest commitment as it needs to be 12 x 12. Like this.
But wait, there’s more. You can also use a log cabin to track a bunch of different weather events. The basic square is 5 strips. You could do it like this:
- Avg Temp
- Low Temp
- High Temp
- Precipitation
- Dew Point
What’s that you say? You want to do more? I’m looking at you @jangrimmer. You could do a four inch square.
- Avg Temp
- Low Temp
- High Temp
- Precipitation
- Dew Point
- Major Weather Event (hurricane, nor’easter, tornado, flood, etc.)
- Stage of the moon
If you keep your different measurements in the same order of knitting and maintain the orientation when you put them together, then you’ll likely have a more visual path. I love the idea of doing the rain in blues, etc. so they look like what they are.
Okay, so now that we’ve got that done, I promised two more options. The first one is easy. So easy that I can’t believe it took so long to figure it out. Go ahead and do your 365 squares and lay them out like this.
Those grey strips on the side are either picked up and knit in garter stitch or worked back and forth in your choice of crochet stitches and then the four extra squares can be whatever you want. They could simply be the first two and last two days of the year or they could be the last day of each quarter. You do you.
The last blanket idea is also super simple but has so much potential. It’s Kay’s Stripy Baby Blankie and it is a favorite of mine. It’s so darn simple. You cast on 190 stitches, work 10 rows (5 ridges) to start and then you continue you on keeping a five stitch garter border on each side. You create texture on this by knitting the first 12 rows in k36, p36, k36, p36, k36 (work the wrong side as they appear). Once you’ve finished this first band, start a new color and flip flop the pattern so that you’re doing p36, k36, p36, k36, p36. Keep going that way (a new color and a flip flop every 12 rows) until you have 21 colors and then knit 10 more rows (five ridges) and bind off. It looks like this.
You need to modify the size on this to get 365 rows and you can choose to modify the texture of the bands. To keep the dimensions and have 365 days to knit, you can divide the bands by the month, i.e. work January, flip flop, and work February, etc. I think it would look cool. (And it just gave me another idea but I’m not even going to think about that right now.)
Here’s the modification to keep the size the same. You’re going to cast on 270 stitches and the base pattern row (which starts after the five ridge border) is k52, p52, k52, p52, k2 while keeping five stitches at the end of each row in garter stitch. After you do the border, you knit one row each day, and when you’re done you do the other border. It has the added benefit of having a pre-game and an after party!
Phew! This was a much bigger post than I expected. But I think it covers all the conversions and math that has come up so far. And at least this one had some pictures. There are lots of other options out there that we could play with if you want to. A Mary Jane Mucklestone Station Wagon Blanket? That could work. A Kaffe Fassett Kites Throw? We could give it a try. Hah! I just imagined my mother saying “If all your friends were attempting a Fox Paws Temperature Shawl, would you?” and petulant, adolescent me saying, “Probably!” in my most sarcastic tone.
My plan is to cast on on January One as an homage to Cara’s post, cleverness, and Instagram. I’ll use the high temperature for New Year’s Eve. I’m not sure what my palette will look like because I don’t have all my yarn in house yet so I haven’t been able to lay it all out on the floor and play with it. I do have what I will need to start so I’m good to go.
Special thanks go out to Cara for sparking this notion. Cara, I’m sure you had no idea what kind of marvelous mayhem you started but I’m so glad you did. Thanks also to Charles Simonyi. We couldn’t have done this without you. And, of course, to Ann and Kay. Great writers, hosts, business women, leaders, and all around fabulous women.
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My mind is blown. Amazing work. Now to make a decision…
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My son loves the architectural Lego sets. This year we splurged for the Colosseum which is between 9K and 10K pieces. The look on his face was priceless.
Happy building!
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The baby blanket pattern is similar to the swarf. I’m still considering doing the swarf in 4 panels like the color explosion and seaming them for a 4 season blanket.
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Remember that 2022 is a leap year. We will have 366 days. (not to wreck havoc)
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I am in! I retired 2 weeks ago. This will be my Ode to the next stage of life.
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Jan my dear, do you think I didn’t wake up screaming about this one! I double checked. 2022 is actually a Julian year. Not a leap year. The best way to remember is that presidential elections happen on leap years.
Which means I have two more years to figure it out. And I believe it will be havoc.
P.S. I just double checked in case my original google search was a dream.
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Wow! Congratulations! And what a great way to celebrate. If you want, you can actually start it on the date you retired and document your first year of freedom!
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Dang. I forgot about the swarf. I’ll take a look today to see if there’s anything tricky.
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My bad. I should know this, as I have a granddaughter born in 2016. DUH!!
I was thinking that I might do that. I need to find las numbers for my zip code . We have a huge temperature range where I live in Maine.
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Thank you! I feel like an underachiever now with my paltry approx 2,500 pieces, grin.
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Here’s the key for my blanket. I chose 21 colors, and massaged the temperature brackets a little - some are a 3 degree range and some a 4 degree range (mostly). The four columns on the right are historical data from 2020 taken from https://www.temperature-blanket.com/ . I used that information to help me set up the brackets. Given climate change 2022 will probably be even warmer, but I hope not to use too much Pink Bliss!
I will be crocheting hexagons and will most likely use one color consistently for the borders. Most likely Granite or Carbon, I should swatch a little to decide.
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